Hasta La Gadget!

Want to put your overheating iPhone to some use (other than scalding your cheek as it goes to work in your hip pocket, of course)? Why not try it out as a barbecue grill, “no app required”?

Illustrator Chad Covino tossed off these fun sketches after reading about the hot, hot handsets here on Gadget Lab, and, while rather sardonic, Chad’s idea is a good one. The glass top of the iPhone is wipe clean, like the ceramic cooker hobs beloved of the Lady’s clean-freak mother. And because you’ll have to use the iPhone 3GS if you have any hope of getting your meat past the salmonella stage of doneness, you’ll also benefit from the grease-repelling oleophobic coating.

The only problem we foresee, then, is that the iPhone is tiny in comparison to a real grill, although you’ll probably have space for six chicken nuggets or a very small, reshaped burger patty. And you can even use it as a countdown cooking timer!

No APP required [Chad Covino]

Tea Stains is an ingenious solution for anyone working in the kind of office where you send some poor sap to make the tea for everyone. The makers, a pair of English sisters (which is why it’s called Tea Stain and not Coffee Stain) have invented a tray liner which not only reminds you who takes what how, but also reminds you which cup is which when you get back to your desk.

As you can see above, the Gadget Lab office is pretty easy, and everyone’s drinks are so distinctive we don’t really need the tray liner. Dylan prefers his girl-drinks, starting pretty early on the “hard” stuf. Danny Dumas of course keeps any steaming, hair-curling liquid away from his barnet and instead chooses styling gel. Priya is surprisingly hardcore in her drinks choice, and it’s hard to get a word out of Brian these days that isn’t about kittens or motorbikes.

The blank spots? Those are for visitors. The mat is glossy and can be written on with a white-board (dry-erase) marker. Lizzie and Ally will even sell you an eight-sided dice to decide who’s turn it is to visit the kitchen. Tea-tastic! Mat £5 ($8), dice £1 ($1.60).

Product page [Tea Stain. Thanks, Lizzie!]

Rock’n’Roll is a takeaway transformer. The concept design takes a thin sheet of steel and rolls it into a cylinder. The trick is that, rolled one way it becomes a bracelet, and rolled the other way, along the long axis, it turns into a chopstick. You will, clearly, need two.

Would this work? We’re guessing that the natural state of the sheet is the chopstick form, and that you’d have to unfurl this with some force to make the wrist-strap, which would itself be held in shape by your arm. We like the playful use of materials, but come on — you can walk into pretty much any sushi bar and get some disposable chopsticks from there, although we admit that a regular wooden stick can’t double as a drinking straw.

Product page [Tuvie via Core 77]